Jesse Osborne (pictured in a photo from at least two years prior) told friends over Instagram message he was going to kill his father so he could get the keys to his truck and drive to Townville Elementary School, where he hoped to kill 150 children
The 14-year-old charged with killing a first grader in a South Carolina elementary school shooting told friends over Instagram he hoped to kill 150 students, an FBI agent said.
Jesse Osborne told friends in an Instagram message that he was going to kill his father Jeffrey so he could get the keys to his truck and drive to Townville Elementary School.
He said he chose the elementary school because a police officer could be there so he could kill more people.
Agent Shandal Ewing showed a judge the messages Monday during a hearing to determine if Osborne will be tried as an adult on murder charges for killing his father and a first-grader in the school in September 2016, just weeks after his 14th birthday.
These messages came to light after Jesse, now 15, told a court on Tuesday that he was part of an Instagram group where others including teens from ‘Manhattan, Germany and England’ talked about ‘shooting up’ their schools.’
He said those other students ‘cheered him on’ when he told them about his plans.
Jesse is said to have opened fire in the playground, shooting two students and a teacher with his father’s .40 semi-automatic pistol before the gun jammed. Six-year-old Jacob Hall, one of the children shot, later died in the hospital.
These messages came to light after Jesse, now 15, told a court on Tuesday that he was part of an Instagram group where others including teens from ‘Manhattan, Germany and England’ talked about ‘shooting up’ their schools.’ The shooting resulted in the death of his father Jeffrey, left, and six-year-old Jacob Hall, right
The shooting rocked the small community of Townville in South Carolina for weeks
The teen also told his Instagram friends he was going to kill his father so he could get the keys to his truck and drive to Townville Elementary School, according to the messages.
The teen’s lawyers are asking witnesses questions to prove Osborne had a hard home life, including whether they the teen’s father threatened to kill his pet bunny or knew that the teen felt like he was bullied throughout his school life.
Agent Ewing showed messages starting about a week before the shooting.
Osborne bounced ideas off his Instagram friends, wondering if he should go to his old elementary school or the middle school he was suspended from after bringing an ax and hatchet to school because he said he was bullied.
‘The middle school has tons of cops,’ he wrote six days before the shooting. ‘The elementary school doesnt.’
He laid out his plan to his friends five days before the shooting and later typed that he would probably kill 50 to 60 people at the school and ‘if I get lucky maybe 150.’
The night before the shooting, Osborne wrote ‘IM GONNA PUT A (expletive) BULLET IN HIS HEAD TONIGHT’ and that morning, he wrote ‘Im waiting for my dad to ride home from his farm.’
He shot his father three times as he sat on the sofa, then called his grandfather in a panic as he drove to the school, authorities said.
The teen’s lawyers are asking witnesses questions to prove Osborne had a hard home life, including whether they the teen’s father threatened to kill his pet bunny or knew that the teen felt like he was bullied throughout his school life
Osborne drove the truck into the playground fence at Townville Elementary School and fired four shots, police said.
The gun jammed each time because he loaded the wrong ammunition, and the teen said he suddenly worried he was going to go to hell, dropped the gun, didn’t try to get inside the building and started crying and screaming, according to testimony and his confession to investigators introduced earlier in the hearing.
His attorneys want him tried as a juvenile, where he could be held only until his 21st birthday if found guilty. Jesse’s lawyer Frank Epps is pictured in court Monday
Jacob Hall, six, was shot in the leg and bled to death. A teacher was wounded in the shoulder and another student was hurt, but both survived.
Prosecutors want the Osborne as an adult, where he could face decades in prison if convicted.
His attorneys want him tried as a juvenile, where he could be held only until his 21st birthday if found guilty.
Jesse was arrested at the school then confessed to the killings in a videotaped interview with FBI agents moments later.
A full transcript of that interview was released on Tuesday after being heard in court at a waiver hearing to determine whether or not he will be tried as a juvenile or an adult. He was arrested for murder and attempted murder.
In the interview, he said he snapped on the morning of the shooting but had been plotting a larger massacre for months and hoped to kill 30 children at the school and was saving up to buy an AR-15.
He said he had been trying to gain access to his father’s gun safe for weeks and even used dish soap on the keypad which unlocked it because it was ‘glow in the dark’ and would show where his finger prints had been.
The teenager told police on the day of the shooting that his father ‘fussed’ at him and ‘fussed’ at his mother Tiffney when he had been drinking and that the night before his rampage, Jeffrey’s mood was particularly bad
The teen was present for the hearing. He arrived in a yellow jumpsuit and was in a wheelchair because of a basketball injury he suffered last week.
After his arrest at the school, he told police he wanted to get his confession ‘out of the way’.
He said that the seed for the rampage was planted the night before, when Jeffrey began ‘fussing’ over him because he was drunk and unhappy about his meager paycheck.
The teen also said that he was interested in WWII history and liked learning about the Civil War.
Months before the shooting, he said he researched Columbine, the 1999 massacre in which 15 were killed by two teenage gunmen, and that he asked his father what it was.
‘He said, “Two ner retards went into a school and shot it up.’ I researched more because I knew that dad’s kind of biased. Then I started researching about that stuff,’ he said.
The hearing continued Wednesday and may last the rest of the week.